State of Energy & Commodities
Q4 2026
Oil back above $90 on renewed Strait tensions. Gold and silver rebuilding after two separate crashes. Copper at a fresh all-time high. And wheat’s spring spike cooling as the harvest data lands. Here’s where every major commodity stands entering Q4.
Five things that defined commodity markets through Q3 2026 and will shape how Q4 trades.
As of early September, oil is once again trading at high levels after a late-August flare-up near the Strait of Hormuz reversed some of the ceasefire-driven easing seen earlier in the summer. The structural oversupply case pre-dating the conflict hasn’t gone away — it’s just being overridden by geopolitical risk premium again.
Gold and silver each fell sharply twice in 2026 — a mechanical, derivatives-driven crash in January and a fundamental, inflation-driven repricing in May–July that pulled $5.3 billion out of gold ETFs in June alone, the largest monthly outflow since 2013. Gold has since rebuilt to $4,429/oz (+25% YTD); silver sits at $66.47/oz, still roughly 45% below its January peak but recovering.
Copper hit $6.58/lb in August, up 46% year to date, with a new all-time high of $6.83 reached during the month. The structural AI-data-centre, EV and grid-buildout demand story we’ve been tracking is now compounded by real supply disruptions in Indonesia, the DRC, Chile and the flooded Kamoa-Kakula mine — the shortage isn’t a forecast anymore.
Wheat spiked 25% year to date to above $6.60/bushel in spring on Black Sea shipping disruption and a 55-year low in US Hard Red Winter production. USDA’s August WASDE settled the season-average forecast closer to $6.20/bushel as the picture became clearer — still elevated, but off the panic highs.
Uranium is trading around $81.55/lb on an unbroken structural supply deficit. Natural gas is a genuine tale of two markets: US Henry Hub sits at a soft $2.70/MMBtu, while European TTF has pushed above €70/MWh — its highest level since January 2023 — on renewed supply anxiety tied to the same Strait tensions driving oil.
As of early September, oil is once again trading at high levels. The path to get there wasn’t a straight line. Prices eased through much of the summer as an April ceasefire held and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz partially normalised. Then, in the final days of August, renewed US strikes near the Strait reignited the same risk premium that drove the initial shock earlier in the year, pushing both Brent and WTI back up sharply.
The underlying tension hasn’t changed since Q3: the pre-war structural case for oil was genuinely bearish, with non-OPEC supply growing faster than demand. Every time the geopolitical premium fades, that bearish structural picture starts to reassert itself — and every time tensions flare again, it gets overridden. Q4 is likely to keep swinging on that same axis rather than settling into a clean trend.
Precious metals had a genuinely rough middle of the year. As we laid out in detail in our explainer on the 2026 metals selloff, gold and silver each fell sharply not once but twice this year. The first crash, in January, was largely mechanical — options expiry, stop-loss cascades and index rebalancing in a thin market took gold from roughly $5,500 down to $4,100 (-25%) and silver from $120 to $62 (-48%), before both recovered quickly by March. The second crash was a genuine fundamental repricing that ran from May into early July: stronger-than-expected inflation data shifted rate-cut expectations, and gold fell another 11.7% in June alone while silver dropped 22%. Gold ETFs saw $5.3 billion in redemptions that month — the largest monthly outflow since 2013.
The two crashes had different causes and that distinction matters for how durable the current rebuild is. The January crash was a paper-market mechanical event with no bearing on physical demand — it unwound itself. The May–July crash was about real rate expectations, which means it will only fully reverse if inflation data and central bank policy cooperate. Both metals have recovered meaningfully since, but the second crash’s macro trigger is the one worth watching for a repeat.
Where they stand now
Gold has rebuilt to $4,429/oz, still up 25% year to date despite sitting roughly 21% below its January all-time high near $5,608. The structural demand case — central bank accumulation from China, Turkey, Russia and India, persistent inflation, elevated government spending — hasn’t gone anywhere; it’s the same case that drove the multi-year rally before either crash. Silver is at $66.47/oz, still about 45% below its January peak of roughly $121.64 but recovering, with the same industrial-demand tailwind (solar, EVs, electronics) supporting it alongside its safe-haven role.
If you’ve been following AllinAllSpace, you’ll know we’ve been covering the structural copper shortage story for some time — see the coming copper shortage: why the world is running out of its most important metal. This quarter, the forecast finally became the headline. Copper hit $6.58 a pound in August, up 46% year to date, after touching a fresh all-time high of $6.83 during the month.
What’s new since Q3 isn’t just the demand side — AI data centres, EV charging, grid buildout — it’s that the supply side took real, dated hits on top of the existing structural tightness: flooding shut down significant capacity at the Kamoa-Kakula mine in the DRC, and further disruptions in Indonesia and Chile compounded a deficit that mining companies were already fifteen to twenty years away from meaningfully closing through new projects. This is no longer a story about what might happen to copper supply. It’s a story about what already has.
Copper went from “the shortage is coming” to “the shortage is here” in a single quarter.
Uranium is trading around $81.55 a pound on the UxC/TradeTech industry benchmark Cameco reports (as of July 31), holding the structurally bid pattern we flagged last quarter — though pricing services vary by several dollars depending on methodology, so treat the exact figure as directional. Nothing about the fundamental picture changed in Q3: mine restarts still take years, reactor programmes in France, Japan, the US and the UK are still accelerating, and AI-driven power demand is still pushing every major tech company toward nuclear power-purchase agreements. This is one of the few commodity stories this quarter that didn’t have a dramatic swing attached to it — which, given how structurally tight the market is, is itself notable.
US and European gas prices have diverged sharply. Henry Hub sits at a soft $2.70/MMBtu (EIA, as of August 25), reflecting healthy domestic supply. European TTF, by contrast, has pushed above €70/MWh — its highest level since January 2023 — as the same renewed Strait of Hormuz tensions driving oil higher have reignited European anxiety about LNG availability heading into winter, with storage running at just 64% capacity for this time of year. New LNG supply out of the US and Qatar is still coming online through the second half of 2026, which should cap the European price eventually, but the timing of that relief now depends on how the Hormuz situation resolves.
Wheat had the loudest agricultural story of the year. As we covered in our wheat price analysis, CBOT wheat rallied 25% year to date to above $6.60/bushel in spring, driven by Black Sea grain shipments running roughly 40% below year-ago levels and US Hard Red Winter wheat production falling to a 55-year low. That analysis argued the fundamental case was the strongest it had been since 2022, with $7.08 as a plausible near-term target.
The rally didn’t fully hold. USDA’s August WASDE — the monthly release that, as we explain in our guide to reading the WASDE report, is the single most important data point in agricultural markets — settled the new-crop wheat season-average forecast closer to $6.20/bushel, corn at $4.50/bushel, and soybeans at $11.40/bushel. None of the structural pressure disappeared; the Black Sea disruption and the US production shortfall are both still real. What changed is that the August data gave the market a clearer, calmer read than the spring’s supply panic did, pulling wheat back from its highs without erasing the underlying tightness.
| Grain | Aug 2026 WASDE forecast | vs. spring peak | Key driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wheat | $6.20/bu | Down from $6.60+ | Black Sea shipments still ~40% below year-ago levels; US HRW at 55-year low |
| Corn | $4.50/bu | Steady-to-firm | Ethanol and feed demand; China trade uncertainty |
| Soybeans | $11.40/bu | Range-bound | China purchase patterns; South American supply growing |
| Rice | Elevated | Neutral | Asian monsoon outcomes still the swing factor |
The thin-stocks buffer problem we flagged last quarter is still in place. Global agricultural stocks-to-use ratios remain near multi-year lows heading into 2026/27, which is exactly why the spring wheat spike happened as fast as it did — there was very little cushion to absorb the Black Sea disruption. That fragility didn’t go away just because the August numbers came in calmer than the spring panic implied.
The unwind we flagged last quarter continued through Q3. Coffee and cocoa are both still normalising from the severe 2024–2025 weather-driven supply crunches, while sugar and cotton remain the two softs with genuine upside pressure.
Brazilian and Vietnamese crops continued recovering through Q3. Prices remain elevated versus pre-2024 history but kept drifting down from the spring’s levels. La Niña development is still the main swing risk for the next Brazilian harvest.
West African supply kept improving. Industry commentary through the quarter (including from major chocolate makers) pointed to continued easing, though aging tree stock and climate risk remain the long-term overhang.
Brazilian ethanol production kept competing with sugar for cane feedstock through Q3, with higher energy prices continuing to make ethanol the more attractive use of the crop.
Trade-tension effects on synthetic fibre supply chains kept favouring natural cotton through the quarter. India’s export policy stayed the key variable to watch.
Three things matter most as the fourth quarter opens.
Watch #1 — Whether the Late-August Hormuz Flare-Up Escalates or Fades
The entire commodity complex — oil most directly, but gas, and through fertiliser costs, grains too — is still hostage to this single variable. A quick de-escalation reopens the path back toward the pre-war structural oil surplus. A sustained escalation pushes Brent back toward the $115 severe-scenario territory flagged earlier this year.
Watch #2 — Whether the Precious Metals Rebuild Holds Through Q4 Fed Decisions
Gold and silver’s second crash was driven by inflation data shifting rate expectations. Any further inflation surprises tied to the renewed oil price move could reopen that exact wound. Watch the relationship between real yields and gold price action more closely than the headline price itself.
Watch #3 — Copper Supply Restoration Timelines
How quickly Kamoa-Kakula and the other disrupted operations come back online will matter more to Q4 copper pricing than any demand-side news. At $6.58/lb and rising, the incentive to restore supply quickly has rarely been higher — but flooded mines and permitting delays don’t move on economic incentive alone.
Q3 was the quarter the commodity complex proved it can absorb real shocks and keep moving. Precious metals took two separate hits and are still standing. Wheat spiked on a genuine supply scare and cooled once better data arrived, without the underlying tightness disappearing. Copper’s shortage stopped being a thesis and started being a headline.
The one thing that hasn’t changed since last quarter is the single point of failure sitting underneath almost all of it: the Strait of Hormuz. Everything else this quarter was commodities doing what commodities do — overshooting, correcting, re-pricing new information. Oil is the one still waiting on a resolution that hasn’t come.
Data draws from Trading Economics commodity pricing (Brent, gold, silver, copper, TTF), the U.S. EIA / FRED Henry Hub spot series, Cameco’s UxC/TradeTech uranium benchmark, USDA’s August 2026 WASDE report, and AllinAllSpace’s own prior reporting on the 2026 metals selloff and wheat market. All figures accurate as of September 1, 2026.
This report represents the editorial opinion of AllinAllSpace and does not constitute financial or investment advice. AllinAllSpace is not a registered investment advisor. Commodity markets involve significant risk.